


And I Have Touched the Sky

by BreTheWriter



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-28
Updated: 2013-10-28
Packaged: 2017-12-30 17:26:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,046
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1021393
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BreTheWriter/pseuds/BreTheWriter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Leonard McCoy knows he's damned lucky to have been cured of his disease. He doesn't expect any more miracles...but he'd reckoned without Jim Kirk.</p>
            </blockquote>





	And I Have Touched the Sky

Leo was thankful nobody insisted on escorting him up to the bridge. For one thing, it would have made him feel like a damned invalid. For another, he would have felt obligated to talk, and that was the last thing he wanted at the moment. The ship was powering steadily away from the ship carrying the Fabrini descendents, but he wished the physical distance would translate itself to emotional distance. 

He hadn't loved Natira. Not really. What he _had_ loved--and he admitted this to himself--was the idea of spending the last year of his life somewhere other than the _Enterprise_. It wasn't that he didn't like the ship; as iffy as he still was about space, halfway through their five-year mission, she was still his home, and his family was still aboard her. That was the trouble. He hadn't wanted to make the people he loved suffer through watching him die. 

Hadn't wanted to make _Jim_ suffer. 

Xenopolycythemia. Vicious, incurable, and invariably fatal. Leo had seen the numbers on his routine physical and known immediately, even before M'Benga had confirmed the diagnosis. He'd insisted on being the one to tell Jim, for a couple of reasons. One was that, as CMO, it was _his_ job to tell the captain about serious illnesses among the crew. But mostly it was because Jim was, well, Jim. He was the most important person in Leo's life. They'd been friends for seven years and lovers for four. Leo couldn't let anyone else tell him. But seeing the pain in Jim's eyes when he delivered the news...it had almost made him drop dead, then and there. 

That was really why he'd accepted Natira's proposal. That, and knowing that it was the only way Jim and Spock would be let out of the ship alive. He hadn't told Jim any of that--only that he was staying--and he knew that had hurt Jim even worse than the knowledge that Leo was dying. But Jim had caved in the end. He and Spock had beamed back to the _Enterprise_ , leaving Leo behind. The Oracle had embedded a device in his neck and "married" him to Natira. It had used that device to punish him for communicating with the _Enterprise_ , telling them about the sacred book that they could use to save the ship from destruction. 

Spock had been the one to save Leo. He acknowledged that. Spock had removed the device from his neck...and Spock had found the cure for xenopolycythemia, somewhere in the miasma of the ship's library. He'd saved Leo's life, and while he'd been sarcastic about it, he was grateful. But there'd been something in Jim's expression when he'd told Leo the Fabrini descendants would be making planetfall in fourteen months. _I thought you would want to thank them personally._ Leo wondered what Jim had meant by that...or if he believed that Leo had real feelings for Natira. And he wondered how to reassure him that it wasn't true. 

Spock and Jim had had to go back onto the bridge, while Leo lay in the bio-bed, recovering from the last of the cure. It had been painful and it had taken a lot more out of him than he'd thought. But now he was cleared to return to duty. 

And, dammit, he was going up to the bridge. 

The doors slid open ahead of him, and he stepped off the lift. Uhura, at her station, turned slightly and smiled when she saw him. Spock, too, gave him a slight smile and a nod. Jim turned around and practically leapt out of the chair. "Bones! How are you feeling?" 

"Never better, Jim," Leo answered. It was a slight lie. He was worried about Jim--the captain was pale, and his hands were shaking a little--but physically, he felt just fine. 

"Good." Jim crossed the bridge to where Leo stood and hugged him. 

Leo hugged him back, a little surprised. Jim was affectionate, of course, and _very_ hands-on, but usually not on the bridge. Then again, he supposed these were exceptional circumstances. And this wasn't necessarily a romantic hug--just a quick, relieved, thank-God-we're-both-alive sort of hug. 

Jim let go of him and took a half-step back. "Bones, wait. Before anything else happens..." He took a breath, slipped one hand into his pocket, and pulled out something. In one fluid motion, he dropped to one knee and flipped open the lid of what was obviously a small black velvet-covered box. "Will you marry me?" 

Leo's breath caught in his throat. Everything else seemed to disappear. There was only the box, and the gold band set with a single sapphire, and the face behind it with its wide, anxious eyes, almost the exact same shade of blue...and the question hanging between them. 

Leo thought of Jocelyn, the things she'd shouted at him over the last year of their marriage, the things she'd accused him of. He thought of Natira, hurt and betrayed when he refused to let her put the device back in, even though it nullified their "marriage." He thought of the fact that he was thirty-five and Jim was only twenty-nine. He thought of Jim's wild youth and his own checkered past. 

And then he let all of those thoughts go and answered with a single word. "Yes." 

Jim looked as though he'd swallowed a lit candle. He pulled the ring out of the box and slid it onto the appropriate finger, then stood up, threw his arms around Leo's neck, and kissed him, _hard_. Leo kissed him back, deeply and passionately and with all the strength of his love and renewed life. And both of them were crying, and neither one cared. 

The sound of applause drew him back to reality, and he and Jim pulled apart. They looked at one another for a moment, both of them smiling through their tears, and then turned sheepishly to look at the bridge crew. Sulu and Chekov, Scotty and Yeoman Rand, Uhura and even Spock were on their feet, smiling and clapping for all they were worth. Scotty muttered something that sounded suspiciously like "about damned time." 

And Leo, who only a few minutes before had believed everything was ruined, couldn't have agreed more.


End file.
